Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

Cast: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Ranbir Kapoor, Anushka Sharma, Fawad Khan, Deepti Naval

Rated: 4/10

Why oh why can’t anyone in Bollywood — big or small — make a simple, heart-touching romance? Like Yash Chopra used to? Why does Karan Johar — whose film as director we had been waiting for, for so long, had to have such a complicated relationship status for Ae Dil Hai Mushkil?

What was Aishwarya Rai doing there at all? A stunning shaira in Venice who is game for emotionless romps in the bed? She is a shaira for God’s sake! She had to have emotions, if nothing else. Why did she leave husband Shah Rukh? Karan? Anyone? In fact, why did Shah Rukh Khan even make that one-minute outrageous appearance as a victim of unrequited love? Couldn’t have looked more irrelevant, ridiculous if I may say so. And then there was Ranbir Kapoor. Why did he have to behave in such a retarded manner, trying to be a cute lover out of school almost? What was wrong with Anushka? Well, what the fish!

Ae Dil Hai Mushkil made my heart race but for all the wrong reasons. It made me angry, very very angry. This Diwali, I did not want modern kitsch on the big screen, definitely not a non-romance romance, especially from KJo. He used to be so good till Kabhie Khushi Kabhie Gham. And then came his slide to pompous profundity. Student Of The Year seemed needlessly autobiographical, Bombay Velvet was a disaster no one could contain and now there’s ADHM to survive.

I give up on dhadkan films from Bollywood, from Karan Johar.

The first half of the film is like a rocket on crash course. The Ranbir-Anushka ride is Harry meets Sally kind of stuff. Only, here Harry can’t see platonic and Sally can’t go beyond it! That instantly throws the film into the insipid ek-tarfa mould. Whatever little hope there was of a buzzing romance dies there and then. The modernisms, the youth talk, the buddy-ism, the staccato talk between could-be lovers, all that stays with you for a while and then starts to get irritatingly recurrent.

Next comes the second half. If anything could be slower than this half, it would well be stationary. Amid all this needless high and equally needless low, there was supposed to be some heart-warming love. You get only a bed-warming version of it from a stunning advertisement of Mac in the form of Aish. Come on KJo, she is made for better, more meaningful stuff. So are you and all others you have the star power to populate your empty film, or should I say films now? 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 30 October, 2016